From: "Paul McDermott", [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tom, I'm afraid I have to disagree also.
>I must disagree with you cars legitimate reason AK47's don't. I used to
use
>similar weapon in UK for pract. rifle (I still use an AK47 in Norway).
Firearms were invented and developed to kill. The fact that people developed
a sporting interest does not take this away. Cars were invented and
developed for transportation. Some people chose to race them, but this does
not alter the concept of their origination. The fact that it was an AK47 is
not an issue, certainly not to non-shooters unaware that bootloads of them
disappeared to the four corners of the world when communism collapsed. Would
this tale have been different in some way if it had been an AR15? Or an Uzi,
or an H&K? They saw 'gun'. What can be debated over the type,make, etc?
>Your thread seems to be similar to the "don't say anything" balls up that
>followed Dunblaine.
My thread was merely that positive things can be found in shooting, all
around if you care to look. Focus on them, rather than getting dragged into
side issues and spurious debates. Trying to enter any debate where a crazy
man has driven round firing an AK47 at anyone who moved, and thinking that
they can make onlookers feel better disposed toward shooting in any form,
seems to me to be naive in the extreme.
>So what is wrong with "no crime in Texas" if its true?
It's not. Look at the figures. Even taking into account the disparity of
population, you are more than forty times more likely to be shot there than
here.
>We need more and more facts like that, so an overwhelming case is there for
>Joe Bloggs (in the street) to understand. He does understand the
>sub-culture of crime in this country [[cue for Neil F to enter fray]] and
he
>wants that not to effect his family as much as you or I do.
So relaxing gun control will lower crime? Under 3% of the people shot in the
US were shot by people 'defending' themselves. Of armed criminals who
committed robberies of any sort questioned, over 95% said they carried guns
in case the target they selected was armed. 85% admitted to be prepared to
kill first if it appeared they were.( US Justice Department Penal Study
1997) So far as crime in this country goes, who do we want to have guns? Our
gallant countrymen we saw in Belgium recently. Yep, that business in the
square would have gone down much better for the addition of a few MP5's for
them.....maybe the odd S&W...
>Give Joe Bloggs understandable data, week on week, he will eventually see
>the logic,
You don't state what this 'logic' is?
I have always enjoyed shooting. I started shooting when disability meant I
couldn't play rugby or football any more. I could still compete with others,
on an equal<sic> footing. The fact that we all enjoy shooting does not mean
we should delude ourselves.
Paul McDermott.
--
That Justice Dept. study is seriously misleading and so is your statistic
about Texas. The reality is that the level of violence in Texas for
example is not consistent, it's not like lung cancer from smoking which
is fairly general.
You are in fact safer in most parts of the US than you are here, because
the violent crime is concentrated in certain urban areas, whereas the
burglary rate is lower generally and so is theft in the rural and
surburban areas compared to the UK. So provided you steer clear of
certain urban areas (e.g. Liberty City, FL where nearly all of the
tourists murdered in Florida were killed) you are safer overall in
the US than here.
The problem with the statistic on self-defence the DoJ uses is that it
excludes uses where no-one was shot, and in 99%+ of self-defence cases
no shots are fired, as when an attacker sees a gun pointed at them they
flee.
I do think people get a bit carried away with Gary Kleck's "2.5 million
self-defence uses per year" statistic as even Kleck says that is the
highest possible level that can be derived from his study. There is
a later DoJ study where they point out that self-defence is not always
legal and Kleck's work likely included a lot of those, i.e. drug dealer
defending himself from other drug dealer for example. But the later
DoJ study had some pretty obvious biases in it so it is hard to swallow
all of it. I think at the end of the day it is very hard to tell how
much "net benefit" guns have, the reality is that I look at it from the
personal perspective. I can shoot better than any criminal, and I would
rather be armed than unarmed, because I am probably physically weaker
than most attackers. Unfortunately I don't have that option here.
The reality is that you are not the average statistic, everyone is unique
and looking at a list of statistics and assuming that you have anything
in common with them is mistaken because no-one is completely average.
Also you are completely off-base with your comment about Belgium. That
is totally unrelated to whether or not less gun laws would lower crime.
My personal view is that less gun laws would certainly lower crime if
only because there would be more police resources available. The
controls we have are totally bonkers as they stand, and I point out that
nearly every country that copied them ditched them later on because they
were too complex and achieved too little, New Zealand being the best
example. There is totally no point to all the controls we have on rifles,
they were only included to stop shipments of rifles to tribesmen "in
outlying parts of the British Empire". Nowhere in the developed world
is the misuse of rifles a serious threat to public safety, controls or not.
The realistic view is to frame a system of controls that is at least
sensible and we don't have that.
Derek mentioned to me that Jan Stevenson reckoned the police spent
L2 million investigating him (unsuccessfully) and I know for an almost
certain fact that close to a million must have been spent on Richard
Law's case(s) as they tracked down every gun he ever sold. And for
what? To convict him of selling pistols which could be modified
into submachineguns (which wasn't illegal, and Guy Savage had the same
charge dismissed).
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
___________________________________________________________
T O P I C A The Email You Want. http://www.topica.com/t/16
Newsletters, Tips and Discussions on Your Favorite Topics
